AEN in the News

Academic freedom — the freedom to explore any subject wherever it leads and to exchange ideas with colleagues of one’s choosing — lies at the heart of the academic enterprise. Without this freedom, our universities would be servants of special interests and political ideologies. This would create the safe space some students seek in which students would be spared exposure to vigorous give-and-take on contentious issues. But this would be an education stripped of intellectual diversity.

These are the demands of the academic BDS (the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement — to cut off debate, stop the exchange of ideas with Israeli academics, and coerce faculty around the country to follow the dictates of a narrow political movement.

ZIMPHER: RATIONAL TUITION PLAN UNLIKELY THIS BUDGET SEASON— POLITICO New York’s Keshia Clukey: “State University chancellor Nancy Zimpher says she doesn’t think the state’s rational tuition plan will be a priority in the 2017-18 state budget. ‘We had two budget seasons to bring it back and there wasn’t either the collective will or the political will to do that,’ Zimpher said of the plan, also known as SUNY 2020. ‘I think the governor was supportive, I think he still is supportive, but the Legislature wasn’t able to roll it over, or prioritize it, I really don’t think I’ll ever know.’

The plan allowed SUNY and CUNY schools to increase tuition by $300 a year for five years — providing for more long-range planning for students and the universities, although the idea of annual increases has been controversial. Its extension was expected to be included in the 2016-17 state budget (an election year), but was taken out and instead the budget provided an $85 million increase in funding for the SUNY and CUNY systems and froze tuition for one year.

The American Studies Association (ASA) infamously endorsed a boycott of Israeli academic institutions at its annual meeting in 2013. It was subsequently condemned by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), the American Association of Universities (AAU), the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities (APLU), and the leaders of some 250 American colleges and universities. Unfortunately, the program for the 2016 annual meeting scheduled November 17-20 in Denver, Colorado shows that the ASA’s obsession with vilifying Israel has, if anything, intensified.

Among the proceedings are ten panels focused at least in part on the perceived evils of Israel and Zionism. This would not be surprising at an academic conference devoted to Middle Eastern and North African Studies but it is unusually high for American Studies. The ideological conformity of the panels also raises serious questions about the ASA’s stated objective to serve as “a network of scholars, teachers, writers, administrators and activists from around the world who hold in common the desire to view US history and culture from multiple perspectives [emphasis added].”

Portland State University (PSU) President Wim Wiewel, in a timely statement in early June 2016, spoke out against a divestment motion pushed by adherents of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The motion was about to be voted by the Associated Students of Portland State University. President Wiewel called the motion “ill-advised and divisive,” and worried openly about the tenor of the conversation stirred by BDS on campus.

Wiewel said: “The tone and tenor of the BDS movement has made members of our community feel unsafe and unwelcome at PSU, and it is not acceptable to marginalize or scapegoat them. Antisemitism cannot and will not be tolerated on our campus.”

At Camp David in 2000, during the most hopeful discussions about resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a Palestinian representative at the table denied any Jewish historic connection to Jerusalem. Speaking of the Holy sites, he referred to the Dome of the Rock and Al Aksa mosques sitting on the Temple Mount, but labeled as fantasy the notion that there had ever been a Jewish Temple on that spot or in the city at all.

This allegation at a critical juncture undercut the aspiration of achieving a two-state solution — the Jewish state of Israel and a Palestinian state — and proved devastating to the left-of-center Israeli delegation seeking a compromise that would serve the interests of both peoples. With the hope that each side was finally willing to accept one another’s narrative, now the Israelis were being told once again that they had no legitimacy in their historic homeland.

The recent disruption of an Israel-related event at Georgetown University (GU) was a “flop,” due mainly to the quick thinking of its moderator, the head of an academic organization told The Algemeiner on Wednesday.

Kenneth Waltzer, executive director of the Academic Engagement Network (AEN) — a group of American college faculty members who oppose the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement — was referring to a disturbance created by anti-Israel activists during a September 8 panel discussion on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s career, hosted by GU’s Center for Jewish Civilization.

On a university campus, a student group invites a speaker. Several other groups oppose that speaker’s views. During the first minutes of his speech, they pull out megaphones, repeatedly yell profanities at him and cause such disruption that he cannot be heard and has to leave.

The protesters publicly defend their actions as justified because they think the speaker and his views are offensive to them. Situations like this repeat themselves over the years.

The City University of New York today released the results of a nearly six-month investigation by two highly regarded outside counsel into allegations of anti-Semitic incidents on CUNY campuses.

They found that almost all of the alleged offensive speech was protected under the First Amendment, and that a few incidents of alleged conduct subject to discipline involved perpetrators who could not be identified. In one case where individuals could be identified, the report notes, the college in question disciplined the students responsible for violating university policy.

What some see as a celebration of culture through food, others see as a political statement, and an offensive one at that. Just slip an Israeli flag on a toothpick.

To the Tufts chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, last fall’s Taste of Israel was appropriation, pure and simple.

“I don’t think the Palestinian students on this campus would see it as ‘cultural’ if they were to walk in and see flags of Israel all over the food their grandmother used to cook before she was evicted from her village,” said Nic Serhan, an S.J.P. member who is part Arab, part African-American.